I agree aj is one of the lowest price sites, but if your music is liked, sales will more than make up for it. Aj exclusive deal is very favorable to authors. Also as mentioned in the previous post. You have versatility to manage your front page and marketing. Other sites will take as much as 65 percent and in some cases they blanket sell your music with other tracks so you end up getting what you would get from 1 aj sale. The back end pro royalty is a selling point for other sites. But i can say from experience it is not that glamorous. You wait sometimes years to see your royalties and you will be lucky if the usage was even reported on the proper que sheets. To me the pro royalty side is very shady. Im sure some artists do well in comercials and major network shows. But if you get on a small cable show, the earnings are not that good.

solarsound, even 35% (though many of sites offer 40-45% for non-exclusive) from 30$ are more than 50% from 14$.
And though we all love AuJ, it’s really not very good thing for freelance musicians. Just because it keeps prices very low (as some guys mentioned, “ridiculously low”). Lowest prices and strongest reviewing – is a killing combination for us, authors. Since then, of course, customers will be coming here and buy music here. Other sites has a lot more garbage in its content (I know a place that has no review-process at all!).

All we can do about it is to unite to stand up for our works. As for me, I’m not considering the existing system, when you learn to play some instrument or/and to compose for 4-7 years and then earn for your work at 3 times less than a guy who learned basic html for several months, as a normal order. It’s commercially understandable (since everyone in modern world needs web-site, but few people need music), but is not very fair, as I think.
And if there will be a lot of people, positively aiming for deleting their collections in case they won’t be heard, we can change the situation. Unfortunately, I don’t think that many of top-authors would go so far, and without them it won’t work.

My feelings about this situation are a little stronger, than it may seems from this post, but I was trying to be… politically correct, so to speak. Hope I didn’t insult anybody.

I think in terms of pricing AJ is not too bad at all. Finally one major difference between AJ and competitor sites is that each licensed item is for single use only. Most of competitior pages sell for a higher rate but also multiple usage for the clients that buy.
If you buy a track for a webseries for example, on competitors site you buy a track for example for 100 bucks and you’re done. On AJ, you need to buy the track for every new episode. At east that’s what the license terms say.
That said, in sum I have the feeling that AJ is more attractive in terms of pricing, since I’d rather sell 10×14 then 1×100 for example. But even with that in mind I guess an increase of the mentioned 2$ per price category would keep AJ competitive but still make authors more happy

My opinion is that well-grounded market price would be twice of existing one )
As for licensing, I think that many of buyers (again, I don’t want to insult anybody) just pick the cheapest one, not bothering themselves with the conditions. In most cases you don’t have the resources to track the usage of your works, so you don’t know (and will not know), whether the license terms are violated or not.

Here’s my theory, and many of you may disagree with me, but here goes:

From what we’ve all discussed here AudioJungle is (one of) the cheapest amongst the better stock music sites. PLUS with the current license agreement customers don’t have to fill cue sheets and pay royalties… And even though the quality here does vary a bit, in general the reviewers keep most of the garbage out.

So if we think in terms of economics, AudioJungle provides a great service for very cheap. Other sites may provide (marginally) better service (as in providing better music as their criteria is stricter) but at a far higher price. In terms of site design and ease of use I feel AudioJungle blows most other Stock Music sites out of the water and is on par with about 3-4 others.

Long of the short of it, if I were a music supervisor I’d definitely go with AudioJungle. Cheap, no royalties and generally amazing music, especially if you stick to the more established authors. And yes, its’ true that the authors will earn less because of this model, but heck isn’t the music industry waning in the other departments as well (apart from live music… that’s having a sudden revival).

If I were on the corporate end of AudioJungle (or Envato) I would only raise the prices to reflect inflation. Otherwise I’d keep the prices low to encourage frequency of sales and maintain customer loyalty. Yes, some authors may leave, but many others who need the money and the exposure will stay. Also they have the absolute loyalty of many of the top authors here and with their hefty earnings why would they want to leave. As long as these top authors stay so will the customers.

AudioJungle (and by that extension Envato) is a business and there’s nothing good for business like killing off the competition. And that’s what they are dong here, understandably. ThemeForest is making them a fortune so they can afford to have less earnings here at AudioJungle and keep the prices low whilst they are running the others out of town. It’s good business. It’s good military strategy. Using one force to support another. I’d personally use the same strategy. I’d then only raise prices after clearly taking out the competition.

Like most internet business, in a few years only a few giants will be left standing (search engines: google, bing and yahoo; browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome; Social Networking Sites: Facebook) and the same applies for stock music. Right now there are a few hundred stock music sites (fact. check out the music library report and become a member, great info there) but in a few years (if not already) only 2-4 will matter. I’m quite confident AudioJungle will be one of them.

As much as it looks like I’m taking sides with corporate (I am a businessman myself after all) it will benefit us authors on the long run. When the day comes that only a few stock music sites will reign, those of us that have established ourselves here will reap the benefits. So keep writing great music guys!

gbiasillo said
There are several significant differences between AudioJungle and competitor sites, which I really hope is addressed.

1. IMHO AJ prices are far too low, and should be at least double the current rates.
2. The exclusive rate on AJ is equivalent or less than other site’s non-exclusive rate. The non-e rate on AJ should match other sites IMO .
3. PRO registered tracks aren’t allowed on AJ. If you get a track placed with the right client, there can be non-trivial back end royalties to be earned.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like this site but, for me at least, being an exclusive just isn’t worth the rewards given the above points. I truly hope things will change.

TortoiseTree said
When the day comes that only a few stock music sites will reign, those of us that have established ourselves here will reap the benefits. So keep writing great music guys!

I guess many of us could name 4-5 main stock-music sites, where one’s have good sales. Countless amount of unknown 2-nd-league sites just doesn’t matter. And I really do not see any reason, why some years later some authors on these “grand”-sites would get a sudden raise of profit.Moreover, this situation can be even worse for our world musicians community, if Audiojungle would drag other sites off to the lowest prices.

gbiasillo said
There are several significant differences between AudioJungle and competitor sites, which I really hope is addressed.

1. IMHO AJ prices are far too low, and should be at least double the current rates.
2. The exclusive rate on AJ is equivalent or less than other site’s non-exclusive rate. The non-e rate on AJ should match other sites IMO .
3. PRO registered tracks aren’t allowed on AJ. If you get a track placed with the right client, there can be non-trivial back end royalties to be earned.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like this site but, for me at least, being an exclusive just isn’t worth the rewards given the above points. I truly hope things will change.

-Gari

+1

@thesensercomplex – how come you’re still exclusive then?

@brownhousemedia – I think a lot of people agree (myself included), so why do you think we all continue to accept it? For anyone who thinks the fees are reasonable, work out the rate per hour on your tracks to get things in perspective (some of you will be happy, most won’t!). And we’re definitely going the route of stock photography unless suppliers like AJ keep market prices higher.